We like them both exceedingly, though
the first savours perhaps too much of the king, and the last too
little of the lover.
HENRY VI
IN THREE PARTS
During the time of the civil wars of York and Lancaster, England was
a perfect bear-garden, and Shakespeare has given us a very lively
picture of the scene. The three parts of HENRY VI convey a picture
of very little else; and are inferior to the other historical plays.
They have brilliant passages; but the general ground-work is
comparatively poor and meagre, the style 'flat and unraised'. There
are few lines like the following:
Glory is like a circle in the water;
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,
Till by broad spreading it disperse to naught.
The first part relates to the wars in France after the death of
Henry V and the story of the Maid of Orleans. She is here almost as
scurvily treated as in Voltaire's Pucelle. Talbot is a very
magnificent sketch: there is something as formidable in this
portrait of him, as there would be in a monumental figure of him or
in the sight of the armour which he wore. The scene in which he
visits the Countess of Auvergne, who seeks to entrap him, is a very
spirited one, and his description of his own treatment while a
prisoner to the French not less remarkable.
Salisbury. Yet tell'st thou not how thou wert entertain'd.
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